The Siberian Dilemma Read online

  “Didn’t you give her the assignment?”

  “She makes up her own assignments. That’s what makes her unique. I think this one is about the oligarchs in Siberia. Have you heard from her?”

  “Only this.” Arkady took out Tatiana’s train schedule and pointed out the underlined connection to Moscow from Irkutsk. “This was, I believe, her schedule.”

  “There you are. So she missed yesterday’s train. She’ll catch one today or tomorrow.”

  Arkady knew that Obolensky loved Tatiana; that’s what made his equanimity all the harder to buy. “Has she been threatened lately?” Arkady asked.

  “Lately? Do you know how many death threats Tatiana receives in a week at the magazine?” Obolensky opened a desk drawer and pulled out a stack of letters. “Take your pick. These are threats made against her just this month from Kaliningrad because she exposed the radioactivity of the Baltic Fleet. And from Moscow because she wrote a sidebar about the president’s new dacha. That’s what makes her such a target. It’s more dangerous to be an honest reporter than a dishonest policeman, wouldn’t you say?”

  “But you’re not worried about her?”

  “I’d just say you have an investigator’s paranoia.”

  “Maybe.”

  The door to Obolensky’s office was open and his staff found reasons to look in as they passed by. They were young and earnest about the truth but suspicious when it came to police investigators. Arkady did not blame them.

  “So you’d say these letters mean nothing,” Arkady said.

  “That’s right.”

  Arkady scooped up the letters and timetable and stuffed them in his overcoat. “Then you won’t miss them.”

  4

  It turned into the first real snowfall of the year, full of pillowy flakes that settled gently on statues and pedestrians alike. Men slouched. Women walked as straight as ramrods in fur hats.

  Zhenya was a tall, weedy boy but he always had a new girlfriend. They would sit motionlessly in cafés to watch him play chess as snow packed against the windows. His latest conquest was Sosi, an Armenian girl with purple hair and dramatically scalloped brows who watched his games so intently, she didn’t seem to breathe. She wore a scarf wrapped three times around her neck and gloves cut off at the fingers.

  The café had well-worn sofas instead of banquettes, tables with scars, and enough players with high chess ratings to lend the place authenticity.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Arkady asked Sosi.

  She shushed him and pointed to a chessboard where Zhenya’s opponent was on the brink of extinction. As the man recognized the hopelessness of his position, he toppled his king and slunk off.

  Zhenya couldn’t totally suppress a smirk.

  “That was magnificent,” Sosi said.

  “You two were made for each other,” said Arkady.

  At seventeen, it wasn’t clear whether Zhenya was a prodigy or a scam artist. He had become Arkady’s responsibility years before, when Arkady had taken him out of a children’s shelter just for a day, then for a second day and a third. Even at five years old his only interest had been chess, and since then he had developed a reputation as a sort of chess pirate.

  Zhenya lit a cigarette and sat back. “That was an easy hundred dollars. See what Sosi made me?” He slipped the money into the new false bottom of his backpack. Velcro and velvet could make anything disappear.

  “You could make twice the prize money if you entered a tournament,” Arkady said. “And you wouldn’t have to hide it.”

  “Sure. But my way, I play when I want to.”

  “And who you want to. You’re going to run out of marks.”

  The one thing that stung Zhenya was the insinuation that he ducked the best players.

  “Anyone I play, it’s their choice,” Zhenya said. “I can’t help it if I’m better than they are. Sometimes I play a rook or a bishop down. What could be fairer than that?”

  “They never know what hit them,” Sosi said; her eyes grew as round as moons. She looked like the perfect fanatic to encourage a leap into a volcano. She rolled a rook back and forth on the Formica as if she were gathering an electric charge. “Zhenya can turn any game into a slaughter.”

  It was like visiting the Macbeths, Arkady thought. He wiped the condensation that clouded his windshield and watched a tram climb a back street. The opposite wall was yellow. Moscow was a yellow blur.

  5

  As swallows darted back and forth along the Kremlin’s walls, the sky went to purple, then to black, and still Tatiana had not called.

  Arkady called Victor.

  “We had to count every fucking animal, starting with ‘aardvark,’ ” Victor said. “My sister hasn’t changed. Did you know that the cute little platypus has a poison fang?”

  “Everyone does. How is your sister?”

  “The Jungle Queen? I’d watch out if I were you. She likes you.”

  “Did you figure out who freed the bears?”

  “Do you think I care? Dear God, may I never see another bear in my life.” Victor hung up before Arkady could.

  * * *

  Windshield wipers thudded back and forth and Arkady felt like a pilot looking for a landing.

  Backtracking sounded good. He knew he would probably get nowhere at Yaroslavsky Station itself. The attendants on the Siberian Express were probably halfway back to Irkutsk by now.

  Five o’clock was the hour when many Russian men got thirsty, especially men who had reached the retirement age of sixty-five and had little else to do. Of course, they weren’t totally retired. They washed cars, collected bottles and cans, or tutored unappreciative students. On holidays they brought out their good suits and caps and chest boards full of medals, then curled up with the cat and drank. Maybe drank moonshine raw enough to make a man go blind. There were exceptions. Riot police were allowed early retirement at forty-five, and in recognition that the state would collapse without him, the president had the option of living forever. Imagine that. Living forever with Putin. When Arkady got close to Yaroslavsky Station, he darted into a grocery store and picked up a bottle of vodka.

  While he waited to pay, he heard a dismissive snort from the woman behind him. From her pink fur hat and coat to her felt-lined boots, she looked like a sugared pastry.

  She eyed Arkady’s bottle and asked, “Is that for a female acquaintance?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is,” Arkady said.

  “Then do yourself a favor and go first class. Not Stolichnaya. You want Russian Standard vodka.”

  “I do?”

  “Get a bottle with a ribbon on it. Take my word for it. It will pay off in the long run.”

  “Good to know.” Arkady switched vodkas.

  The cashier waved him forward. “If you want an informed opinion, Svetlana Maximova is the person to see. She’s seen the world.”

  “That’s true,” the woman admitted.

  Arkady added a box of chocolates and paid. Outside, the snow was getting thicker. Men slouched while Svetlana slid by as smoothly as a magnet. She had problems, however. One of her plastic grocery bags tore and threatened to spill its load of canned goods, dried fruit, and instant noodles.

  “Where are you going?” Arkady asked. “Maybe I can give you a lift.”

  “And get into a car with a stranger and a bottle of vodka?”

  “Well, it’s your choice.”

  “I’d be an idiot.”

  “What floor is your apartment on?”

  “Six.” That tipped the scales. “Very well, but I’ll have my eye on you.”

  The stairs in her apartment building were narrow and the lights flickered on and off. Svetlana was ahead of Arkady, when a can dropped from her broken bag and began rolling ominously down the steps until he extended his foot and blocked it. Another can rolled free and he blocked it with his other foot.

  “Brilliant,” she said. “Only now you can’t move.”

  Arkady heard a meow and saw a cat at
the top of the stairs. It purred and started to ooze down the steps.

  What next? Arkady couldn’t help but laugh.

  She delivered a forceful “Scat!” and the cat bolted. “My name is Svetlana,” she said.

  “Arkady.”

  “Arkady, I think you jumped higher than the cat.”

  “I’m sure I did.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be held responsible if you collapse. Sit down.”

  Arkady guessed that Svetlana was about forty, with an attitude between flirtatious and demanding. Her walls were covered with travel posters for Omsk, Novosibirsk, and Irkutsk, all Siberian cities. The chairs were covered with red pashmina shawls and the air was heavy with perfume.

  “Who’s the lucky girl you were buying this vodka for?” she asked as she put away groceries. One cabinet held two bottles of the otherwise despised Stolichnaya. “A little wife at home?”

  “No.”

  “You’re just a man of mystery who goes around offering free rides to stranded women?”

  “That sums it up.”

  “Chivalry is not dead.” She twisted the cap off a Stolichnaya and poured two glasses. “Cheers!”

  As Arkady drank, he noticed romance novels stacked in orange crates; CDs, mostly opera; photos of friends, mainly female. She was at ease and definitely used to being in charge.

  “See, here are my mates Olga and Jacqueline scuba diving in Greece. Providnitsas, the same as me. We stick together.”

  He said, “I have this feeling that we met before.”

  “Please, that must be the oldest line in the book.”

  “Still, do you work at the train station?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” She drew herself up.

  “As a providnitsa?” Arkady said. A providnitsa was a person of some consequence. Riding on each passenger car, providnitsas collected tickets, fed the stove, tended the samovar, settled disputes, and kept third-class passengers out of first class. It took a boldness that Arkady had spied in Svetlana at the grocery store.

  “People think that it’s the engineer who runs the train,” Svetlana said. “Nonsense. Inside the train, it’s the providnitsa with the samovar. Vodka and tea, that’s what the Siberian Express runs on. And you are… let me guess: A musician? I love musicians and basketball players. I won’t bother you with the reason why.”

  They clinked glasses and downed their drinks in one go. “Now tell me, Arkady, what do you do?”

  “I’m with the prosecutor’s office.”

  “Oh.” She was disappointed; she had liked this man until then.

  “I’m looking for a missing person,” Arkady said. “I think that anything that happens on the train or in the yard, you’re the sort of person who would know about it.”

  That was doubly bad. She screwed the cap back on the bottle.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Take a look at her.” He showed her the photo of Tatiana. The image was gray and slightly blurred, but the face was striking, slightly tilted—coquettish, even—sharing a joke with the photographer. He remembered taking it at an outdoor fair. A carousel had played “Moscow Nights” over and over.

  Svetlana shrugged. “Working at a train station, I see a thousand faces in the course of a day.”

  “I’m talking about passengers riding first class on the Siberian Express. The train started in Beijing, stopped in Irkutsk, and finished in Moscow. Somewhere between Irkutsk and Moscow, Tatiana disappeared.”

  “Not on any train I’ve been on.”

  “She was supposed to have boarded the train in Irkutsk November tenth at 15:57 and was expected back in Moscow on the fourteenth, 13:45.” Arkady stood up and scribbled on a business card. “Maybe you’ve heard of her: Tatiana Petrovna.”

  “Is she a movie star?”

  “No.”

  “Then I never heard of her.”

  “She’s a journalist.”

  “Sorry, dear, my shoes are awfully wet. Some other time. I wouldn’t be a providnitsa long if I started making waves. Ta-ta.”

  With that, she practically pushed him out the door.

  * * *

  Russians were famously dangerous drivers. They were apt to fly across three or four lanes and drive so close to each other, they were practically in each other’s skin. Black limos snaked through the avenues, then tunneled under buildings and hid in darkened courtyards.

  For almost a month now, Arkady had suffered a lover’s deprivation. Snow did not help. He once was so sure he saw her walking in Gorky Park that he had gotten out to follow her into a maze.

  Tatiana disappeared between box hedges. He thought he found her on a Zen-like pebble path, only her raincoat was shorter and her face was square, a pretty Slavic face but the wrong face. The world was full of wrong faces.

  Once home, he turned on the TV without bothering to turn up the sound. He found it curiously relaxing, like Obolensky’s aquarium. He couldn’t stand the prospect of eating alone, just as he couldn’t stand company. He found that there was little difference between microwaved pasta and microwaved pelmeni. Mainly tomato sauce.

  After dinner he began going over the letters he had taken from Obolensky. Some of them were death threats, others simply hate mail. There were fifteen letters in all, the products of feverish but unimaginative minds.

  He read them in one go, preferring to swallow them whole rather than draw the poison slowly. The obsessive nature of one writer could result in ten pages of vitriol, the same misspellings, the same erratic scrawl. Another wrote half in cursive, half in childish print.

  “You stupid cunt, I can’t wait to stick my gun in your lying mouth, pull the trigger, and watch your blood splatter my bedroom wall. You are the International Yid who betrayed the white race. I will fuck you a hundred times over. I’m laughing because I picture you hanging by your tits. Did you think I missed? I just let you go until next time.”

  “Next time” suggested an appointment of sorts. Previous communication, petty cruelty or pure braggadocio. Half the words were misspelled. Was there something in the last issue of Russia Now that could have incited this kind of anger? Or was it lunacy?

  6

  Across the river, church domes blossomed and the beauty of Moscow was sometimes hard to believe. Driving along the river as it ran along the Kremlin, Arkady saw police divert cars away from the Moscow Bridge. He pulled his car to the side of the road and got out to ask a traffic officer who was in charge.

  “You want the sergeant,” the officer said. “He’s a law unto himself. You’ll see.”

  A six-lane bridge was softly lit by votive candles and strewn with flowers wrapped in cellophane. The bridge had history. A heroic political activist named Nemtsov had been assassinated two years before on the flank of the bridge. He was strolling with his girlfriend after a late dinner when he was killed with four shots from a passing car. The morning after, demonstrators marched onto the bridge by the thousands and erected a makeshift shrine of candles, red roses, personal photographs, and poems. The shrine would stay up for a while but eventually the mood always changed. Demonstrators were met by riot police wearing hard helmets and swinging long batons.

  On this night, the anniversary of Nemtsov’s murder, demonstrators lined up along a bus and looked a little worse for wear, not bruised but scuffed. Arkady saw a flash of purple hair. He walked up to a sergeant with the triangular build of a weightlifter. He gave the impression of a fist clenching and unclenching.

  “Provocateurs,” the sergeant said. “They put the shrine up, we tear it down. They put the shrine up, we tear it down.”

  And the cleanup began. Street cleaners jumped out of trucks and stuffed plastic garbage bags with bouquets, photos, and political placards. Votive candles rang as they rolled over cobblestones, pizza boxes soared in the air, and backpacks lay in a heap. Arkady picked up one that looked familiar and found Zhenya’s chessboard and chess pieces inside. He felt the nap of its Velcro bottom.

  “Why have you detained these
people?”

  “Our detainees? Public disturbance, I guess. Hardly worth the trouble. We’ll take them back to the station and rattle their teeth, that’s all.”

  Martyrs drove Arkady crazy. There were twenty-some protesters in parkas and fur caps. Older couples clung to each other while younger victims braced to absorb the crack of a flexible baton against the knees, elbows, head. Zhenya was trying to hide Sosi behind him. Finally he noticed Arkady.

  “What are you doing here?” Zhenya demanded.

  Behind Arkady the sergeant asked, “You know this fuckup?”

  “I’m here to pick up him and his girlfriend,” said Arkady.

  “For what?” Zhenya demanded.

  “Hustling.” Arkady held up the backpack. “This is the evidence.”

  It was an absurd charge, almost comical, but the bluff might work if Zhenya would only keep his mouth shut.

  Sosi raised her eyes. “We needed money to eat.”

  So she had caught on. Smart girl.

  Arkady handed Zhenya’s backpack to the sergeant. “Look in the false bottom. Of course, whether or not you report this money is your business. You were the first on the scene.”

  “Are you fucking me over?” the sergeant asked.

  “As best I can.”

  Zhenya contained himself until they reached Arkady’s car.

  “Do you even know how much money that was?” Zhenya asked.

  “That’s what’s important? Money? I’ll lend you money. Did you think about Sosi? She could have been hurt.”

  Zhenya looked out the window in embarrassment, a boy’s response.

  “Thank you,” Sosi said.

  “I don’t thank you,” said Zhenya.

  7

  Nina Orlof’s flat was a museum of taxidermy, rooms full of stuffed lemurs and green monkeys that peered with glass eyes through artificial fronds. He found stuffed animals about as interesting as feather dusters. In a slinky sheath of silk, Nina herself looked like the leader of a snake cult. Her invitation to tea had come out of the blue and he supposed that it was her way of thanking him and Victor for coming to her rescue at the zoo. The main thing was that he had slept for a solid six hours and felt close to being human.